The Hours Assembled
by twilightjunkie1313
Summary: They are a flaw in the mechanisim.
1. Chapter 1

Misfits.

Author's Note: I do not own.

…

…

He can hear her footsteps on the floor of the flat, or maybe he just thinks he can. Still, there isn't any way to explain away the sudden all-encompassing chill that runs up his spine. Like the water turned to liquid nitrogen.

Only it hadn't because distant parts of his body registered that it was near scalding.

He blinks, trying to clear the hazy spots in his vision. The steam that is coming off of the tile and his skin is thicker than it should be. Mixed in with the pounding of water into his face and forehead are scraps of a future that hasn't happened yet, he leans further into the spray and exhales hard out of his nose.

He shuts off the water quickly. The slight squeaking of the handle and then the very pronounced silence afterward give way gradually.

There is the sharp inhale of breath as he turns to step out of the shower, a moment of complete panic as he remembers that the sound doesn't belong to him.

She is awake.

It takes a second of careful thought before he decides that toweling dry and putting on pants are the most acceptable things for him to do. She doesn't know him yet, not the way she will eventually. He has to treat her differently, like glass or a spirit bound in spider-silk and lace.

She has her back turned to him when he comes around the elevator shaft, resolutely giving him as much privacy as she can in this open air and soul-lacking space. He wants to thank her and stare at her and throw open his memories and just tell her that they will be close someday.

He takes a few careful barefoot steps to her, stopping more than an arm's length away. He inhales and feels his body tune into hers, an awareness that goes down to his bone marrow.

She turns around slowly, a complete thirty seconds passes before he spots her nostrils flare just the slightest bit. It registers to him that she had only just began breathing and he cannot help but quip a smile broadly across his face. His heartbeat shutters into being again and he waits, because these first words belong to her.

"It was you."

He cannot tell if she is on the edge of mental breakdown or wrapped up in figuring out the mechanisms responsible for making this moment possible. Grateful awestruck confusion have her breathing shallow pulls of air. It is all he can do not to touch her.

As with everything else he must get the timing exactly perfect, and while he hadn't calculated the specifics of this interaction he knew he must wait a moment more. It would be easier said than done.

He has always been able to read her best. It takes no effort to focus in oh her face and watch the emotions play across it, confusion, joy, fear… everything namable he has ever known… until it settles into something he could never classify.

His expression changes, the smile falling out of his eyes as it is replaced by something battered and loyal. He is grateful, so impossibly grateful at what he finds in her. Because she wouldn't be herself without this quality. It is sparking at him, singing into his nerves as he holds himself in place. Waiting, as he had to, for the right moment.

She has impressively assembled herself, shoulders back and jaw slanted just slightly upward, one foot planted a fraction further back than the other. The look in her eye screamed a soft bravery and an open minded willingness to face whatever was coming head-on.

She was still as beautiful as he remembered, even with these touches of an almost-warrior grace.

He is quiet, stare fixed on her eyes as he waits. There are a hundred million questions in the color of her eyes and he can see them fight each other. He understands that he cannot tell her everything. He does his best to tell himself that one day she will know for herself.

He sees her mouth form his name and though she puts no volume behind it he grasps that she is already trying to connect everything together. Trying to become used to the sight of him. His mind fights the fact that she has just called his name. In another set of moments, a past she has not yet had, he would have closed the space between them and pulled her close.

"Why?"

There is confusion for a bright-hot second, written all over her body, before she settles into a calm. He gives her another smile. It is time to explain.

He steps forward, catching the way she leans backward a fraction, to her it is reflexive. He swallows back the thought that she has rejected him. She exhales hard, watching him with a gaze that switches between molten and icy. His hand rises slowly.

The instant his palm meets skin his eyes flutter closed, he swallows hard against the need to press his other hand to the small of her back. He is still attuned to her body, can still feel her frozen in shock and confusion and blank expansive unknown fear.

She steps forward, a half step. It shakes him, unsettles the repeated mantra that he has been whispering to himself in this lifeless flat for the past few months. He has told himself over and over that she cannot be allowed to see him, he cannot interfere with what they will eventually become.

His unoccupied arm presses into her back, hand sliding almost completely around her to rest over her ribs. She is stretching and curling up into his embrace. His hand moves from her cheek and neck to a spot on the back of her head.

He has never felt so empty. He has never been so out of place and at home as in this moment.

Her head is angled down and he can feel a bit of her spine press into his forearm. She shudders and he feels her breathing against his skin. For a moment they are the simplest versions of themselves. Two people who need contact after going so long without.

Then the moment passes and all is quiet. He is blinking the terrified anxiousness out of his eyes as she learns -instantly and slowly- what it is that makes this him so different. When she hits on it, running her mind over the concept again and again, she flinches.

He knows that she understands. He knows with absolute certainty, and he is aware that she cannot ask him if he loves her. Neither of them have the words to frame those sort of questions, he isn't yet sure he can tell her anything without changing the way things will be. It is complicated.

The lights flicker overhead as she steps out of his arms.

His hands fall to his sides and he lets his eyes rest on the floor. He swallows again and fixes his eyes on the last clock set into the far wall.

When he looks back at her she is all but on fire, unsure and ready, anxious, terrified, scared, battle-ready and willful. He is reminded again, why he did this.

In the corner of his vision a clock counts down rare seconds.


	2. Chapter 2

Misfits.

Author's Note: I do not own this.

…

…

He is sprinting lightly, still learning how to tilt his weight forward on the balls of his feet as he runs. He is on the street, dressed in sweatpants, sneakers and the black zip-up sweatshirt that will become like a second skin to him. She had presented him the garment with a hesitant smile and he had taken it, eyes wide, with equal hesitancy.

The first day is easy. He cracks a broad and short-lived grin as he plants a foot solidly on the seat of a bench and then pushes off it hard. He jumps, throwing momentum behind the action and only just clearing the lip of the dumpster before his knees buckle and he lands in a heap. The air is taken from his lungs and he winces, feeling a stinging sensation on the side of his face.

The look on her face is easy for him to read. He wishes it wasn't, because her eyes travel over that broken patch of skin repeatedly and she bites the corner of her lower lip far too hard. He understands in that moment, yet he cannot explain how.

He doesn't give the scrape time to heal properly.

He is out again in two days, free-running by an industrial park not far from the community center. He pulls himself up a fire escape and takes the building's inside stairwell all the way down to the ground floor, calves burning , before heading back onto the street. He runs the edge of the lake. On the flat surface he can focus more on his stride, here he can compress his anger and fear and worry into motion and energy and speed.

She finds him one afternoon standing next to an electrical cord that had been unplugged and snaked around the leg of a streamlined metal chair. He is staring at it with all the analytical stoicism he can manage. She is looking at him in turn, the grocery sack in her arms forgotten. She wonders how it feels to stumble across the scraps of a life you have already had and try to build a replica with the pieces.

After a week and a half he finds a first aid kit sitting neatly on the kitchen table of their flat. Its one of those really good ones, with the surgical scissors and extra tape. He smiles to himself and washes the grit from the deep scrapes along his left forearm. A product of missing an ambitious long jump.

Three days after that there is more gauze wrapping sitting on their kitchen table. He doesn't smile. Instead, he is left wondering how often she catalogues the bruises and gashes he fails to notice. He wonders absently if the version of himself she has already met… the version he is trying so diligently to become… will bear the marks of missed steps and underestimated jumps.

He runs three times around the lake one evening several days later, ignoring the way his body tries to fight him into thinking about the motion of it. It wants to pull his brain in, demand a sequence and a structure. But it is running… and he has done this enough to not think about whether the movement is right or wrong in its execution.

He learns. Ever so slowly it comes to him.

The fluidity of his motions comes with muscle memory, after the hundredth jump over a seven foot gap between three story buildings a ten foot jump just becomes a shift in effort, a rolling landing to dissipate energy instead of a running landing. He stops thinking about it, because his body has learned these actions.

He is home late one night, shuffling silently to the kitchen when he sees a new black sweatshirt folded up and set on the table. Beside it is a case of bottled tea and a single individually wrapped yogurt and a spoon. He smirks, though it is really more of a smile and tugs at the collar of his current sweatshirt. It has been faded and battered for a while now, but he hadn't minded.

It is early one morning, nearing five a.m. and he finds himself holding the edge of the bathroom sink, red-rimmed eyes fixed on the image in the mirror in front of him. He cannot completely recognize the parts of himself that are left, between the girl tangled in grey sheets not thirty feet away and the sudden lean sheets of muscle tissue his body has grafted just under new skin… he is undoubtedly changed.

Months have passed since she carefully handed him that black sweatshirt and he wordlessly accepted the many lead-coated strings attached to it. He thought he has done well, he is half kneeling inches from the edge of a high rise apartment complex roof. He has a pair of binoculars in one hand and his vision fixed on a street corner he selected at random.

When he gets back, padding across the spotless white floor, he finds a note on the table. She tells him to stay put in compact unrushed letters. He stands still only a moment before wandering around the flat. He is now a contrast in motion and stillness, it has taken him months to learn a balance between them both.

She arrives, heaving the lift gate open with a grinding squeal. He spots the enormous black duffel over her shoulder and his eyes widen a fraction as he worries that maybe… just maybe, this is the moment she says she cannot do this anymore.

She puts the duffel onto the kitchen table and nearly bounces a step back as she clasps her hands behind her back and arches a brow at him. When she tells him the bag is his, he reaches for the zip slowly.

He tugs the duffel open and pauses at its contents. He isn't sure, for several consecutive minutes, if she means that this had once belonged to him or if she had purchased it recently. He casts a glance at her and she looks just as painfully lost in thought as he seems to be.

She reaches a hand into the duffel and tugs out a vest-like thing from amid bunches of black cloth. The vest has odd plates on it. She is murmuring something about impact absorption body armor. He catches her mention that she had to guess his measurements and he lets out a grateful exhale.

He begins pulling out the rest of it, another black zip-up sweatshirt and a pair of durable cargo pants, a t-shirt, a logo-less black belt. It is all there, including a pair of armor-plated gloves and tinted paintball goggles. She holds out a pair of combat boots and he wonders if he will be able to move as quietly in them as he can in sneakers.

He has to re-learn movement in the new clothing. It isn't that difficult, the vest fits his body perfectly and he chooses to wear it under a slightly loose sweatshirt. The change of footwear is no challenge at all, the boots protect his ankles and he finds he can still move silently in them.

The armor is hanging in its designated spot in their closet, safe from both their lines of sight, when he takes a look around the flat and wonders what it looked like when he had lived there. He doesn't register that he voiced the thought aloud until she weaves her fingers into his and presses her palm gently into his own.

She tells him it looked like this.

The lights are glinting off of every surface, the floors are white and the furniture is cold, garishly expressionless, stainless steel. It feels like an asylum, a hospital or a prison. It is windowless and it is theirs. It is beautiful and horrible. He looks at the ceiling before he asks if it looked just like this.

She pauses a moment before she nods once.

He squeezes her hand tightly for a second.


	3. Chapter 3

Misfits.

Author Note: I do not own.

…

…

She goes perfectly still once the lift door closes. He has to ask her for the floor number, because she won't reach out to touch any of the buttons and they have been standing in splintered-glass silence for well over a minute.

He is eyeing over the top few buttons, the upper floors in this high-rise building stuffed full of flats and steel and ventilation ductwork. He hardly catches it when she turns her head a fraction and murmurs that it is down. The bottom floor.

He selects the basement level, the lowest floor in the collection of buttons and the lift jerks a bit as it starts downward.

They get out of the lift to a cold, grey, small room with a set of doors against one wall and a tidy bunching of steam pipes and water lines against another wall. It is a new lift, one that goes down further into the sub-floors of the building.

While he hesitates she steps forward and pushes the call button for the lift as if possessed. He observes, eyes wide open and mind struggling to follow this girl to the quiet places she has obviously gone. When the doors slide open she floats inside and he follows her, tugging the heavy grate shut with a rough metallic sound.

This lift is bigger, an industrial lift of sorts. He takes in the sparse metal box with battered wooden plank flooring emotionlessly. He tilts his head a fraction toward her. He doesn't know how to word his unease or mounting set of questions, so he lets his eyebrows knit together instead.

She catches the look and then does something he could not have predicted, she breaks her icy haunted posture and becomes a warmer human, closer to the girl he knows than the damaged one she has so recently become.

She tells him that the flat was a relic of the cold war, or something to that effect. Her eyes fix on his, wide and completely unreadable, as she adds that he had acquired it because it ran on its own electrical, air and water systems.

He nods and wonders how much effort the future version of himself had expended to get the place back into working order. He then questions why he would want to reside in a space so intentionally off the grid.

There is a sudden shifting sensation in his stomach and he realizes that the ride down had been unusually quiet. He mutters the word 'hydraulics' to himself and she cracks a hint of a smile, nodding a bit more enthusiastically than before.

He waits a moment after tugging the lift grate aside. Hanging back inside the hollow space of the lift he can see that she has shifted. She is possessed again, stepping forward, her fingers twitching just a fraction as her hands stay by her sides. She reaches the center of the room and his vision is fixated on her figure, positioned neatly on the empty floor. She turns to him and for a moment he is reminded forcibly of a ghost, a scrap of memory buried in the earth, the projection of a time that had been and would be once more.

He shudders, because this place feels like a tomb and she has willingly made it her home.

He catches it when her eyes flash with something, not fire but life. He steps forward and it is not scraps and she suddenly isn't a ghost. It really is right there in front of him.

The cold chill of a stainless steel table, belly button height and flat. The light panels in the ceiling, the completely open concept bathroom and the meager kitchen, the state of the sheets on the bed… the signs of her intimacy with this place are everywhere.

He lets his mind veer toward the possibility that she has shared both shower and bed with somebody who was and wasn't him. The idea makes him feel like a poor replacement for the prior occupant of the space… he tugs at the cuff of one wrist gently.

She lets him wander the space alone, watching him from her spot in the middle of an empty floor.

He understands at once the significance of her clothing still neatly folded in suitcases. The three pairs of shoes set right next to the open luggage do not suggest organization but a temporary residence. He casts a quick look to the industrial countertop of the kitchen and sees a few boxes and a few cans of heat-and-eat food. There are a few bowls and a pair of mismatched mugs next to the lot of food.

He eventually makes his way around the lift in a slow circle, taking in the state of the place. There were things that had obviously been left from a previous resident. He did not want to think about that. The clustered ropes of cable and connection cording are enough of a reminder that he would, someday, be standing in this room falling for the girl he could not touch.

He makes it to the shower and narrows his eyes at the fact that it is lacking a door. How did he expect himself to be alright with this? Had the place come with a shower when he, or the future version of himself, found it? Impossible to think that he would be alright with anybody just jaunting off of the lift and seeing him stark nude.

Then again, he was residing in the equivalent of a high-tech hole. He did his best to bury the mental strain of considering how comfortable with nudity his future self was.

He doesn't hear her come to stand beside him as he stares at the empty space just beside the bed. He starts a bit when she slides an arm around his elbow. She is careful not to touch him.

They are quiet for a while, this time he can feel her try to read his thoughts, her eyes fixed on his jaw.


	4. Chapter 4

The Hours Assembled.

(MISFITS.)

Author note: I do not own.

…

…

He is stirring a pot of pasta sauce that has yet to boil, eyeing the noodles that are sitting on a separate heating element in a mismatched pot of scalding hot water. His hair is slightly marred and his sleeves are cuffed hastily to his elbows.

He keeps throwing glances back at her, unable to help himself. She is cross-legged on their unmade bed, completely absorbed in a hardcover book. There are a few notebooks in a messy pile just beside her knee.

He wants to ask her if she is really alright with having pasta again for supper, but he stays quiet. She is half drowning his bathrobe, eyes fixed on the pages in front of her.

When he looks away, intent on stirring the sauce and digging around the cupboards for plates and some glasses, she fixes a quick glance at him. Her brows knit together for a small moment and then smooth over as she tucks herself back into the text on the pages.

They continue in strained silence.

He wants to ask her what is so enthralling about the book as he lays two plates of pasta on the table top. She is climbing onto the stool just next to him, pushing her sleeves up to her elbows before they fall back down her forearm. She eats a few bites before he begins tapping the fingers of his left hand on the stainless steel eating surface. He runs a hand through his hair before putting his fork down and looking at her with wide eyes.

She throws him a high-beam smile before she goes after her noodles with a bit more enthusiasm. Their meal is quiet, he asks about her day and she tells him it was fine. She asks him, minutes later, how his run went. He doesn't miss her glance at his newest cut, a thin red line by his ear. He tells her it was good.

…

Hours later he wakes up with a small shout and scrambles upright, his back to the headboard of the bed. It is not automatic when his arm searches for her figure beside him on the mattress. He is half blinded by the pool of light in the kitchen.

She is sitting on top of the stainless steel table, intently staring at what looks like a pile of open notebooks and a few sprawling, massive pieces of paper. She is frozen in place, staring up at him from across the flat. He is quiet when she gently climbs off of the tabletop and walks silently to the end of the bed.

She weaves her fingers together and crosses her arms in front of her chest for a moment. She uncrosses them and he watches her shift her weight back onto her right hip. He is waiting for her to speak.

She says she has something to show him, the words feel loud in the early-late-nameless hour.

He rises from the bed and pads soft footsteps behind her, following her to the tabletop. It is a mess of papers, file folders, blueprints and street maps with neatly inked writing in their margins. He can see the notebooks she was reading earlier and a few small dense journals bound shut with rubber bands. He has no idea what it is, what any of it could be.

She whispers that it belonged to him, her voice starts to split and crack along its seams. She clears her throat and he stands there next to her. She presses a fingertip to the edge of a blueprint. He can hardly hear her when she explains that he would understand.

She doesn't look at him as she says it. Her fingertip stays on the blueprint, he lets his vision double and feels his eyes lose focus as all the information becomes a blur.

His hands are sifting through the papers and the folders before he solidly reconnects with reality. She is murmuring descriptions of each object he touches and he only catches a few of her last sentences. She is talking about a journal, stuffed full of Polaroid photographs.

There is a part of his mind that reels backward, sickened by the idea that someone who was and wasn't him could leave so much residue on the fragile relationship he had with the girl beside him. He feels selfishly possessive for a moment when he recalls her curled up in their bed reading the scraps someone else had left for her.

She presses the small unlabeled journal into his hands, he doesn't understand why she would want him to read this. He is perplexed and it shows, she pauses mid-gesture to wince and chew at her lip.

She sighs, tells him that he had wanted him to read this. He had meant for him to have it.

He swallows hard, taking a step closer to the tabletop and bumping his hip gently into it. He sets the journal down and begins eyeing over the papers in a rush. He recognizes some of the buildings, there are detailed sketches of streets he has never been on, there are addresses and times he cannot quite understand. It's a deconstructed hack job of information. He wants it to just stitch itself back together and make sense again… he wants direction.

She is looking at the journal and he shifts, picking it up, turning it over in his hands and taking a slight step back. He cannot tell what she wants to say, but he knows there are more words. She is editing herself down. Her eyes are perfect, brown and wide and full of sympathy when he finally meets her gaze.

She offers up a smile mixed with a grimace and bites her lower lip hard before stuffing her hands into the pockets of his bathrobe. She doesn't exhale loudly but he can feel her let out a shaking breath of air. He looks down at the journal in his hands.

He cannot hear her footsteps when she walks off toward the bed.

…


	5. Chapter 5

The Hours Assembled.

(MISFITS)

Author note: I do not own.

…

…

He is startled awake, pulling himself together and blinking the sleep from his eyes.

"Simon?"

Her voice has this curiously thin quality.

He is reaching to his right, looking for the lamp's switch with scrabbling fingers. He can feel her shifting on the bed and mentally prays that she doesn't accidentally brush a patch of his skin. That would be horrible. Seconds later the lamp flickers on and he blinks hard against the new light that feels like a nova in their darkness.

She has a bed sheet wrapped around her shoulders and her arms crossed over her stomach. For a moment he worries that she is ill and he panics, thinking about the things they have in their medical cabinet. He bites his lip and she smiles at him for a moment before the expression is washed away with a grimace.

"Are you alright?"

He is shifting as she moves to sit cross-legged between his knees.

"Yeah. I'm fine, just couldn't sleep well."

He gently reaches a hand out to grip her upper arm, the cotton sheet radiating her warmth to his palm.

"It's just complicated, you know?"

He can hear the edge of bitter laughter in her phrasing.

He nods. Then he swallows and clears his throat quietly.

"It is."

She smiles.

He pulls his hand away and folds it neatly into his lap with his other hand. He waits, looking at the shadows and light spots that shape themselves across her skin. She has purple shadows under her eyes that do not fade when she shifts her face in the light. His eyes narrow before going wide again, lip pinched between teeth for a second.

"I can't sleep."

She is murmuring the explanation to the comforter and the bed sheet around her shoulders.

He waits for worn-thin minutes as she assembles her composure. The moment she has it, instants before he watches her seal herself over with confidence and trust… it is suddenly gone. She is leaning forward, shaking and crying .

He watches her cry silently for the span of seven heartbeats. Her fingers are tense underneath the sheet she holds in her grasp. He wonders if her tears can have the same sway over his body that her skin already has.

"You died."

He does not understand.

For a moment he thinks she has had a nightmare, identical to the ones that leave him shaken and fixated on her resting form. It is common enough, amid the people they know, to have those nightmares. He is amused and grateful and a bit raw from the idea that she feels this way about him. That his death would upset her to this extent.

"It was only a bad dream."

He is placing a palm over the sheet across her back and rubbing slow circles when she flinches and freezes under his touch.

"No."

It's only a gasp, hardly a breath from her lungs.

His hand slows, now just resting over the sheet and her spine, giving and taking warmth from her body. The air in the room feels like august morning fog, all chill and no movement.

"It wasn't-"

She is careful to speak clearly, forcing the words out from underneath what Simon can clearly recognize as fear and pain.

"It's not a nightmare."

He feels his lungs pull for air.

"You died, when you came back. In the future… when you go back, you will die."

The words do not register immediately.

"I can't. I am sorry, Simon… I don't-"

She is still silent as she cries, but her words shudder enough for her. Through her voice he can hear her break and through his palm, pressed gently to her back, he can feel her struggle for air.

Eventually, the last of her composure falls and she is curled into a ball between his knees. Her arms are wrapped around her stomach and her eyes are pressed closed. She keeps telling him she is sorry, murmuring apologies between begging him not to go and whimpering that she cannot stand to lose him twice.

He cannot touch her. The sheet she held herself in is crumpled around her lower ribs, knotted up and useless. His hands weave into his hair, tugging his head back as he stares up at the dark ceiling. He blinks back the adrenaline and the fear when he feels them ease forward.

When she falls into dreamless sleep it is out of exhaustion and little else. It is then that he pries himself from the bedding and walks barefoot to the bathroom sink.

He scrubs his face with soap and rises with water. The pipes deliver something that equates to liquid ice this time of night and it flushes him clean. Leaving him cold but clear headed enough to fight off the murky feeling that had settled around him.

He looks over at the splayed form on the bed. He cannot help but wonder how long she held that to herself, how much the knowledge splintered her apart. He folds the towel in a daze and sets it on the lip of the sink, looking up into the mirror.

Red-rimmed eyes and snowy skin, a mess underneath pale complexion and sweat-matted hair. He shuts his eyes and right there lies the fact that he cannot avoid.

He isn't sure he can do this. He is not yet ready to die.


	6. Chapter 6

The Hours Assembled.

(MISFITS.)

Author note: I do not own.

…

…

The blood hasn't even dried on the floor yet.

He doesn't really recall her weight becoming too heavy for him, but his arms are still around her and they are both slumped on the scuffed tile floor. He can imagine her heartbeat inside her chest, hallucinate the sound of air in her lungs. His perception of time is shuttering forward and stopping itself outright. Time tilts backwards and spins around inside his head. Black spots appear at the edge of his vision.

She feels warm.

He is staring blankly at the orange cloth of her ASBO jumpsuit. His face is pressed right up close to it, the zips and buttons and fasteners on the bulky material scratch at his cheek. He is rocking back and forth ever so slightly.

His ears ring. He is aware enough to know that his throat is closing up and his eyes are already swollen, red-rimmed and probably bloodshot.

Time rights itself and he is sent stumbling backward. He cracks the back of his head against the wall as he distances himself with her body. Her corpse isn't holding body heat the same way a living human would.

He is shaking, spent and worn thin. He blinks hard.

Suddenly there is not enough motivation in the world to hold him here, sneakers scuffing the tile floor and both palms smeared red. The shoddy florescent lights catch his focus and he stands, somewhat unsteadily. A red streaking smear of a handprint colors the wall. Kelly is asking him a question and he hears, instead of her voice, the gurgled sound of Alicia trying to pull air into her lungs.

He strides brokenly into the locker room and nudges the taps open with his wrist. He holds his hands under the stream of water, the color is persistent. He can do nothing for a few moments except watch the way it looks against the basin of the sink.

Kelly tells him that in another life he would have made a brilliant serial killer. She frowns as soon as the words leave her mouth, the expression is genuine. The look on his face stays the same and she realizes that he hasn't heard her. She stays leaning against the wall, watching the water, the sink and him. This is the only grace that will be afforded them. She keeps her mouth closed and waits his silence out.

He applies soap to his hands, starting with the backs and working them over until his knuckles are raw and pink. He rinses and looks at Kelly for a heartbeat before going at the soap dispenser again. He avoids looking into the mirror above the sink as he works. This task… getting the last of her off his skin… is too significant to devote anything but his complete attention to.

He rinses again, finally reaching for a paper towel to pat his hands dry. Kelly straightens a bit, ready, waiting, hyper-tense. She follows him as he walks to the first aid cupboard and retrieves a pair of latex gloves. She is confused as he snaps them over his wrists and reaches for the zip of his jumpsuit.

He is still quiet as he takes off the jumpsuit and removes the sparse bits of clothing he had on underneath. Kelly isn't sure she should be watching him as he does this. The motions he makes seem so inhuman, so careful and exact. So she watches, because it is less like watching him undress and more like watching a complete stranger. He finishes, buttoning the last button of his replacement shirt.

"Bleach."

His voice startles her.

"Bleach?"

She is suddenly confused. She has just watched him strip down to his skin in front of her. She thought his first words would be something emotional, something about the corpse in the hallway. The girl he loved.

Instead he looks just past her shoulder with wide empty eyes.

"Yes. Bleach. I'll be needing it."

The rest of them come filtering into the locker room, the door slams closed behind them and Kelly notes that he doesn't flinch at the sound. She turns, walking toward the door and grabbing hold of Curtis' arm. She feels uneasy about everything all of a sudden.

"Wait."

Simon's voice is cold and loud. Everybody holds still, turning their focus to those wide empty eyes.

"Your uniforms. They've got…"

"None of us touched her mate."

"We are clean."

Kelly watches the curious expression flicker behind his eyes. He swallows and does something funny to the set of his jaw.

"Bleach."

Kelly only distantly understands that he is directing this word at her.

She has a blank look on her face when she puts the bleach and various buckets down in the middle of the hallway. Simon is standing with his sneakers a safe distance from the edge of the red puddle that formed on the tile floor. The liquid looks thin when spread out over such a large area. Kelly intentionally clatters the buckets with her foot, the sound makes him look over at her.

Rudy and Curtis are off to the side, eyeing the uncovered body in the hall with a mixture of horror and pity. Curtis is holding a pair of yellow rubber gloves and Rudy is appropriately silent. Simon catches Kelly's glance and says they will need to put her into something.

"Why?"

Her mind hasn't quite begun whirling and clattering away in thought, so moving their friend's body anywhere seems illogical. As she sees it, the corpse belongs in the hallway.

"Because we need to bury her."

It is the closest he will come to humanizing himself.

She nods and trots down the hallway, Rudy and Curtis following her diligently. They find a big duffel for holding children's gym equipment. Rudy upturns it and they watch the contents spill out onto the floor. It is Curtis that suggests they put all the gym equipment away, so they do. It takes a little bit of time, but none of them are quite set on returning to the hallway so soon. Once everything is somewhat organized they shuffle back.

He had acquired a large roll of plastic wrap or possibly a painter's tarp. She is rolled up inside it, the edges taped down so they don't unwind. Her jumpsuit is folded up carefully, her belt rolled and tucked inside one ballet flat. Her clothing sits off in a neat pile on a scuffed but otherwise clean patch of tile.

He is pouring straight bleach into a bucket, a dry sponge sits next to one of his knees. She doesn't know quite how to process this series of motions. They lift the plastic wrap into the duffel and zip it closed. He instructs them to slide it against the opposite wall. Rudy does so with surprising gentleness.

With the corpse safely contained he runs a glance over each of them. Kelly hears Curtis shift under the scrutiny, she cannot blame him.

While he doesn't actually say anything Kelly suddenly feels the implied dismissal. He hasn't gathered any extra sponges, there is only one bucket of bleach. He wants to do this alone. He would like them to leave. He cannot find the words to tell them to go.

She finds Curtis' stare and manages somehow to convey her thoughts. Yes, it was a horribly bad idea to let him clean up his girlfriend's gore alone. She also had no intention of letting him complete that job alone. No, they didn't need to stay. She had a decent handle on this.

Curtis cocks an eyebrow at her, a gesture that feels a lot more like "good luck" than "are you sure?" She breaks eye contact and looks to the bleach sloshing around on the floor. She takes a step forward.

Behind her is the quiet sound of Curtis grabbing Rudy's arm. The pair of them make for the door. It opens and closes with a predictable sound.

He isn't really aware of Kelly. He knows she is standing there, but she is the least real thing on earth. Like a whispered word or the last bits of fog over the lake in the morning. He is half drowned in other things. The way the bleach smells when it mixes with the coppery iron in Alicia's blood. The approximate temperature her body must be at this moment, given the various factors calculated against the rate a body loses heat after death. The amount of stitches and sutures it would have taken to mend the gash across her neck. The particular look in her eyes as he told her he loved her.

Kelly has the sense to leave him alone on his knees. She never really leaves and after a while he comes to understand that she isn't going to assist him. He almost smiles in gratitude when he finally figures that out. He needed to do this.

She still hasn't changed out of her jumpsuit. He catches the orange out of the corner of his eye when she kneels to set a new pair of rubber gloves next to his bucket. She rises, jostling the bleach with her knee. He startles at the sound of the liquid sloshing around it's container. He drops the sponge in his panic and it hits the floor with a wet plop.

He is looking at his reflection in the liquid in the bucket. It is darker, not the color one would immediately think of when recalling blood. His face ripples and blurs as the mixture tries to settle itself. There is a high pitched electronic sound in his ear. Not a buzzing, but not a humming sound. His eyes widen, the inside of his mouth coats itself in saliva.

Kelly is on her knees again, appearing from nowhere and pushing the bottle of bleach aside. She places a hand on his shoulder and tightens her grip. She is getting in his face, muttering something he cannot decipher. His stomach is knotting and turning over. He needs to vomit. He never wants to eat again.

There, the solution to all of his problems. He can die from starvation.

When he opens his eyes it is bright out. He jolts forward and is promptly slammed backwards. Kelly's hand is on his shoulder, holding him down. Time has thrown him into the future a few minutes, his memory offers him nothing helpful. He isn't at all sure how he got outside the community center.

Kelly cocks an eyebrow at him. She is bent over, looking at each of his eyes individually. Her hand still tight on his shoulder.

"Fumes must've gotten to ya."

He nods. He should have thought to open a window or properly cross ventilate the hallway.

He attempts to stand again, gripping the edges of the chair's arms. Kelly's expression gets colder and her hand stays put.

"You ought ta stay here. Fresh air an' all."

He nods.

"Right…"

Kelly is pulling a pack of smokes from her pocket and flicking open her lighter.

He knows.

He stands and breaks into a light sprint, heading for the fire escape ladder on the east side of the building. He jumps, catching the bottom rung with a hand and pulling himself up. He takes the ladder quickly. Kelly is shouting at him from the ground, already heading for the back door. He reaches the roof ten seconds before she does and waits beside a battered reclining chair.

Kelly's eyes go wide as she throws open the door, inhaling a shaky breath before letting it out in a gasp. She glares at him, concern and irritation in equal measure across her face.

"I wasn't going to jump."

She stills for a moment, then inclines her head in the smallest of nods.

He knows.

He had always questioned and second guessed himself when he stood in their flat (It was his, the property of his future self, then it was hers and his, then it was just hers, then it became theirs and now it was his again.) He had never been able to see that future as unavoidable. There had always been alternate possibilities. Always he had been able to envision a future where they live side by side until they are old.

He knows better. He has been forced to see the flaw in his logic.

He never really had any control over any of it. It he went way back, to the beginning of them all, he is sure he would find mechanisms that cannot be changed. They had each acted the way they were meant to act, each taken the only course of action that could possibly be taken. With sickening precision all became as it should have become.

He knows.

He would always fall in love with her. This was his appointed task. His part to play in the mechanism. She would always fall in love with him. She would always make him come to love her. She would always die. He would always survive. (He inhales too much air when he thinks about how many times he has watched her die, how many times she has watched him die for her.) He would always go back.

He knows.

He pivots slightly, the motion smooth after hours of practicing self defense stances and footing changes. He looks at Kelly. She is holding her cell phone casually in one hand. In it she has stored the number of the only person in the city who can store and transfer powers.

It could not have occurred any other way. He realizes this now. He understands.

…

Author (technical) note: I have been working and re-working this chapter for a very long time. The end result is much more dynamic than I had originally planned. It was going to be entirely from Simon's point of view. That idea got scrapped after about the third draft. I simply could not write past the point where he washes his hands. In every draft I had Kelly standing about watching him, more to give a proper representation of how a human would respond to the scenario and how someone would respond to the way he tries to handle it. Then I realized that simply observing Simon would be a better idea for the middle portion and that Kelly's point of view would be easier to read than the stuff going through Simon's head.

So I wrote that.

I also wanted to give this one a chapter title. "The Hour I First Believed" sounded really good, because Simon has this quasi-religious moment and it would fit with the whole "Hours" theme. But then I decided I shall leave it untitled, as none of the other chapters got a formal title. Perhaps later I shall name them all. But for now they stay as is.

The repeated (and somewhat over-done) "He knows" sentences are intentional. I have already mentioned the quasi-religious moment he experiences right there… but I should also mention the completely lost/unsure/ungrounded state he is in at the opening of the chapter. He is holding the still-warm body of the love of his life. He watches her bleed to death. He cannot do anything about it. Safe to say his world just tilted on it's axis.

Any questions on any of the chapters? Anything you want to see written for this collection? PM me, write up a review.


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